According to the latest figures released by the World Gold Council, official gold holdings in Lebanon stood at 286.8 tons as of August 2013. This amount places Lebanon in the 19th position amongst the 100 countries with the highest worldwide gold reserves and the second among the 14 surveyed countries within the MENA region. Lebanon’s gold holdings accounted for 24.5% of the region’s total and 0.9% of the world’s total.
On a global basis, Lebanon was outperformed by Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom while it came before Spain, Austria and Belgium. Regionally, Lebanon’s gold reserves were surpassed by those of Saudi Arabia which totaled 322.9 tons. Lebanon’s holdings exceeded those of Algeria which had a total of 173.6 tons in gold reserves. It was followed by Libya with 116.6 tons, Kuwait with 79.0 tons, Egypt with 75.6 tons, Iraq with 29.8 tons, Syria with 25.8 tons, Morocco with 22.0 tons, Jordan with 14.2 tons, Qatar with 12.4 tons, Tunisia with 6.7 tons, Bahrain with 4.7 tons and Yemen with 1.6 tons.
In parallel, Lebanon’s gold holdings accounted for 22.1% of its foreign reserves which places it first out of the 14 countries within the MENA region and 20th out of 100 countries globally. Regionally, Lebanon was followed by Egypt and Kuwait (8.6%). Globally, it was outperformed by Pakistan (25.2%) and Spain (23.3%) while surpassing Belarus (21.9%) and Egypt (20.8%).
Lebanon Weekly Monitor
15 August
